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SECTIONAL 
MISUNDERSTANDINGS 


BY 
ROBERT  BINGHAM 


Reprinted  by  Permission  from 

THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  REVIEW 

of  September,  1904 


Reprinted,  with  brief  additions,  from 
The  North  American  Review  for  September,  19W 

By  permission  of  the 
North  American  Review  Publishing  Co. 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2013 


http://archive.org/details/sectionalmisundeOObing 


PREFATORY  REMARK. 


The  crux  of  the  following  paper  is  the  historic  fact,  often 
asserted  and  never  officially  denied,  that,  from  1825  (the  year 
during  which  Robert  E.  Lee  and  Jefferson  Davis  entered  the 
U.  S.  Military  Academy)  to  as  late  as  1840,  and  probably  later, 
the  United  States  Government  taught  its  cadets  at  West  Point 
from  Rawle's  View  of  the  Constitution  that  the  Union  was  dis- 
soluble, and  that,  if  it  should  be  dissolved,  allegiance  reverted 
to  the  STATES.  Some  conclusive  documentary  proof  of  this 
historic  fact  is  hereby  offered,  for  the  first  time,  as  far  as  the 
writer  knows  or  has  been  able  to  ascertain.  In  consideration 
of  facts,  which  cannot  be  gainsaid  or  denied,  the  words  rebel, 
rebellion,  traitor  and  treason  should  disappear,  and  NATIONAL 
AMERICANS  should  no  longer  do  injustice  to  each  other's 
motives,  as  every  one  who  took  up  arms  on  either  side  of  the 
war  between  the  sections  did  so  in  obedience  to  the  call  to  arms 
by  his  STATE,  to  which  his  primary  and  ultimate  allegiance 
was  due  according  to  the  theory  of  the  founders' of  the  govern- 
ment and  of  their  successors  till  i860,  and  according  to  the 
official  instruction  given  by  the  Government  itself  at  West  Point 
to  those  who  were  to  command  its  armies.  The  extracts  from 
Rawle's  View  of  the  Constitution,  hereinafter  given,  speak  for 
themselves.  R.  Bingham. 

The  Bingham  School,  Asheville,  N.  C. 


[From  the  Superintendent  of  the  U.  S.  Military  Academy.] 

Headquarters  United  States  Military  Academy, 
West  Point,  N.  Y.,  Nov.  18,  1904. 

*  *  *  *  In  the  forthcoming  Memorial  Volume  of  the  Mil- 
itary Academy  now  being  printed  will  appear  the  following  note 
regarding  the  book: 

342.  73  R.  20  RAWLE  (WILLIAM):     A  View  of  the  Constitu- 
tion of  the  United  States  of  America.     Phila.  1825,  lv.,  O. 
The  text  book,  of  the  law  department,  from  (?)  to  (?) — -The 
copy  of  this  book  owned  by   Library,   U.   S.   Military   Academy 
makes  it  very  probable  that  it  was  used  as  a  text  book. 

(Signed)  A.  L.  Mills,  Brig.  Gen.,  U.  S.  A.,  Supt. 

[From  the  Librarian  of  the  U.  S.  Military  Academy.] 

Library  United  States  Military  Academy, 
West  Point,  N.  Y.,  Nov.  23,  1904. 

*  *  *  The  copy  of  Rawle,  (William) :  "A  View  of  the  Consti- 
tution of  the  United  States  of  America"  .  .  .  Philadelphia,  1825, 
W.,0.,  owned  by  the  Library  U.  S.  M.  A.,  contains  Ms.  notes 
which   make  it  very  probable  that  this  book  was  used   as   a   text- 


book  at  the  Military  Academy,  inasmuch  as  there  is  a  list  of  sec- 
tions and  lessons  marked.  The  book  contains  no  information  as 
to  just  the  period  during  which  it  was  used  as  a  text-book,  nor 
have  we  been  able  to  find  this  out  up  to  the  present  time. 

(Signed)  Edward  S.  Holden,  Librarian. 

[From  the  Librarian  of  Congress.] 
Library  of  Congress,  Washington,  Dec.  3,  1904. 

*  *  *  I  find  on  examination  of  the  Annual  Catalogues  of  the 
West  Point  Military  Academy  that  no  text-books  appear  to  be 
named  until  A.  D.,  1842.  (Signed)  A.  R.  Spofford. 

[From  a  Great  Grandson  of  Wm.  Rawle.] 

211  S.  Sixth  St.,  Philadelphia,  Dec.  13,  1904. 

*  *  *  The  book  entitled  "  A  View  of  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  of  America  "  was  written  by  my  great  grandfather. 
*  *  *  The  book  was,  I  think,  the  first  treatise  upon  its  subject 
in  America.  The  author,  after  having  studied  law  in  New  York 
under  the  Royal  Attorney  General  and  later  in  the  Middle  Tem- 
ple in  London,  was  admitted  to  the  Philadelphia  bar  September 
T5>  l7^>3-  He  was  therefore  of  an  age  to  appreciate  the  doings 
of  the  Constitutional  Convention  of  1787,  which  sat  in  this  city 
where  he  resided.  Doubtless  he  attended  its  sittings,  although 
I  do  not  find  among  his  papers  any  statement  to  that  effect.  The 
work,  I  have  always  understood,  was  for  many  years  used  as  a 
text  book  at  the  United  States  Military  Academy  at  West  Point. 

(Signed)  Wm.  Brooke  Rawle. 

[From  John  Rawle,  Grandson  of  Wm.  Rawle.] 

Natchez,  Miss.,  Jan.  27,  1905. 

*  *  *  In  re.  Wm.  Rawle,  my  grandfather,  I  am  aware  that  his 
view  on  the  "  Constitution  of  the  U.  S."  was  used  as  a  text-book 
at  West  Point,  but  I  do  not  recollect  in  what  years  it  was.  Gen. 
R.  E.  Lee  et  als,  said  that  they  were  taught  by  that  book  while 
at  West  Point.  *  *  *  Gen.  Lee  told  Bishop  Wilmer,  of  Louisiana, 
that  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  instruction  he  got  from  Rawle's 
text-book  at  West  Point  he  would  not  have  left  the  Old  Army 
and  joined  the  South  at  the  breaking  out  of  the  late  war  be- 
tween the  States.  (Signed)  John  Rawle. 

[From  Joseph  Wilmer,  a  Son  of  Bishop  Wilmer.] 

Rapidan,  Va.,  Feb.  10,  1905. 

*  *  *  I  have  a  distinct  recollection  of  my  father's  statement 
that  Gen.  Lee  told  him  that  "  Rawle  "  was  a  Text  Book  during 
his  cadetship  at  West  Point.  *  *  * 

[From  Mrs.  M.  J.  Leeds,  Granddaughter  of  Wm.  Rawle.] 
New  Orleans,  La.,  Jan.  19,  1905. 

*  *  *  I  am  positive  that  the  work  of  my  grandfather,  Wm. 
Rawle,  was  used  as  a  text-book  at  West  Point.  I  have  heard  this 
from  my  own  father,  Judge  Edward  Rawle,  who  died  in  1880, 
a  son  of  the  author  of  the  book. 

(Signed)  Mrs.  M.  J.  Leeds. 

[From  Judge  G.  L.  Christian.] 
Christian  &  Christian,  Law  Offices,  Chamber  of  Commerce 
Building,  Richmond,  Va.,  Dec.  1904. 

*  *  *  I  have  frequently  heard  Generals  D.  H.  Maury  and  Fitz- 
hugh  Lee  state  the  fact  that  "  Rawle  on  the  Constitution  "  was 


one  of  the  text-books  used  at  West  Point  when  they  were  stu- 
dents there.  I  have  also  heard  the  same  statement  iterated  and 
reiterated  time  and  again  without  any  suggestion  that  there  was 
any  question  about  it.  I  saw  General  Lee  last  night,  and  he 
again  told  me  there  was  no  doubt  about  this  being  the  fact. 

(Signed)  Geo.  L.  Christian. 

[From  Gen.  Fitzhugh   Lee.] 

Norfolk,  Va.,  Dec.  5,  1904. 

*  *  *  My  recollection  is  that  Rawle's  View  of  the  Constitution 
was  the  legal  text-book  at  West  Point  when  Generals  Lee,  Jos- 
eph E.  Johnston  and  Stonewall  Jackson  were  cadets  there,  and 
later  on  was  a  text-book  when  I  was  a  cadet  there. 

(Signed)   Fitzhugh  Lee. 

[From  Gen.  Dabney  H.   Maury.] 
In  Vol.  6,  p.  249,  So.  Historical  Papers: 

*  *  *  It  (Rawle)  remained  as  a  text-book  at  West  Point  till 

;   and  Mr.  Davis   and   Sidney  Johnston   and   General  Joe 

Johnston  and  General  Lee,  and  all  the  rest  of  us  who  retired 
with  Virginia  from  the  Federal  Union,  were  not  only  obeying 
the  plain  instincts  of  our  nature  and  dictates  of  duty,  but  we 
were  obeying  the  very  inculcations  we  had  received  in  the 
National  School.  It  is  not  probable  that  any  of  us  ever  read 
the  Constitution  or  any  exposition  of  it  except  this  work  of 
Rawle,  which  we  studied  in  our  graduating  year  at  West  Point. 
I  know  I  did  not.  *  *  *  (Signed)  Dabney  H.  Maury. 

[From  Charles  Francis  Adams.] 
Adams  Building,  23  Court  St.,  Boston,  Dec.  8,   1904. 

*  *  *  Herewith,  under  another  cover,  I  send  a  copy  of  a  publi- 
cation of  mine  (The  Constitutional  Ethics  of  Secession),  which 
bears  very  directly  upon  the  point  made  in  your  letter.  On  page 
16,  in  Note  I,  may  be  found  all  I  know  on  the  subject  of  Rawle's 
View  of  the  Constitution,  and  the  use  of  it  as  a  text-book  at  West 
Point. 

You  will  note  I  there  state  as  a  fact  that  his  View  was  the 
text-book  in  use  at  West  Point  prior  to  1840  *  *  *  I  remember 
that,  at  that  time  [two  years  ago]  I  looked  the  matter  up  with 
the  utmost  care,  corresponding  with  the  librarian  and  authori- 
ties at  West  Point,  and  also  with  at  least  one  legal  authority  in 
New  York.  The  result,  and  my  conclusion,  are  set  forth  in  the 
note.  (Signed)   Chas.  F.  Adams. 

From  "  The  Constitutional  Ethics  of  Secession,"  by  Charles 
Francis  Adams.  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  Boston,  1903.  Pages 
16-17: 

"(1)  Much  has  been  written  and  said,  and  still  more  de- 
claimed, as  to  the  peculiar  and  exceptional  allegiance  due,  in 
case  of  attempted  secession,  to  the  national  government  on  the 
part  of  the  graduates  of  the  Military  Academy  at  West  Point. 
It  is,  however,  a  noticeable  fact  that  anterior  to  1840  the  doctrine 
of  the  right  of  secession  seems  to  have  been  inculcated  at  West 
Point  as  an  admitted  principle  of  Constitutional  Law.  Story's 
Commentaries  was  first  published  in  1833.  Prior  to  its  appear- 
ance the  standard  text-book  on  the  subject  was  Rawle's  View  of 
the  Constitution.  This  was  published  in  Philadelphia  in  1825. 
William  Rawle,  its  author,  was  an  eminent  Philadelphia  lawyer. 
A  man  of  twenty-nine  at  the  time  the  Constitution  was  adopted, 
and  already  in  active  professional  life,  in   1792  he  was  offered  a 


judicial  position  by  Washington.  Subsequently  he  was  for  many 
years  Chancellor  of  the  Law  Association  of  Philadelphia,  and 
principal  author  of  the  revised  code  of  Pennsylvania.  He  stood 
in  the  foremost  rank  of  the  legal  luminaries  of  the  first  third  of 
the  century.  His  instincts,  sympathies  and  connections  were 
all  national.  Prior  to  1840,  his  View  was  the  text-book  in  use 
at  West  Point." 

[From  "  The   Republic  of   Republics."] 

Little,  Brown  &  Co.,  Boston,  4th  Edition,  1878,  Preface,  p.  V.: 

"  Another  event  of  great  historical  interest  in  which  Judge 
Clifford  participated,  was  a  solemn  consultation  of  a  small  num- 
ber of  the  ablest  lawyers  of  the  North  in  Washington  a  few 
months  after  the  war  upon  the  momentous  question  as  to 
whether  the  Federal  government  should  commence  a  criminal 
prosecution  against  Jefferson  Davis  for  his  participation  and 
leadership  in  the  war  of  secession.  In  this  council,  which  was 
surrounded  at  the  time  with  the  utmost  secrecy,  were  Attorney 
General  Speed,  Judge  Clifford,  Wm.  Evarts,  and  perhaps 
half  a  dozen  others,  who  had  been  selected  from  the  whole 
Northern  profession  for  their  legal  ability  and  acumen,  and  the 
result  of  their  deliberations  was  the  sudden  abandonment  [of  the 
idea  of  a  prosecution]  in  view  of  the  insurmountable  difficulties 
in  the  way  of  getting  a  final  conviction." 
Republic   of  Republics,   page  44: 

"The  above  work  (Rawle's  View)  was  a  text-book  at  West 
Point  when  Lee  and  Davis  were  cadets  there." 
Foot  note  1,  p.  33: 

"  They  (Davis  and  Lee)  were  at  West  Point  during  the 
administration  of  John  Quincy  Adams,  who,  as  late  as  1839, 
essayed  to  teach  the  whole  American  people  that  'the  people  of 
each  state  have  a  right  to  secede  from  the  confederated  union.' 
These  are  his  very  words." 

("  The  Republic  of  Republics"  is  understood  to  have  g.iven 
some  of  the  lines  of  defence  by  Jefferson  Davis's  counsel  if  the 
case  had  been  brought  to  trial,  and  to  have  had  the  approval  of 
Mr.  Davis  himself.  The  book  is  very  highly  spoken  of  by 
Charles  O'Conor,  one  of  Mr.  Davis's  counsel,  and  one  of  the 
most  distinguished  lawyers  in  the  U.  S.  in  his  day,  who  wrote 
to  the  author  in  1865  [see  page  IV],  *  *  *  "with  so  admirably 
prepared  and  so  overwhelmingly  conclusive  a  brief  [as  his  book] 
my  task  [of  defending  Mr.  Davis]  would  be  easy  indeed.") 
The  following  letter  explains  itself: 

"41 17  Pine  Street,  Philadelphia,  March  25,  1884. 

"Dear  Col.  Bingham:  While  the  question  of  Jeff.  Davis's 
trial  for  high  treason  was  pending,  Air.  Wm.  B.  Reed,  counsel 
for  the  defence,  was  a  member  of  my  brother's  congregation 
at  Orange  Valley,  N.  J.  He  told  my  brother,  after  it  had  been 
decided  that  the  trial  was  not  to  take  place,  that  if  the  case  had 
come  to  trial  the  defence  would  have  offered  in  evidence 
the  text-book  on  constitutional  law  [Rawle's  'View  of  the  Con- 
stitution'] from  which  Davis  had  been  instructed  at  West 
Point  by  the  authority  of  the  United  States  Government,  and 
in  which  the  right  of  secession  is  maintained  as  one  of  the  con- 
stitutional rights  of  a  State.  You  are  quite  at  liberty  to  refer 
to  me  for  this  statement,  which  is  given  according  to  the  best  of 
my  recollection.  L.  W.  Bacon." 

(Rev.  Dr.  Bacon's  present  address  is  Assonet,  Mass.) 

4 


The  Misunderstandings  Between  the  Sections  of 

Our  Common  Country. 

i. 

It  is  obvious  to  those  who  have  eyes  to  see  that  a  better 
understanding  between  the  sections  of  our  common  country  is  in 
progress,  and  it  may  hasten  that  progress  to  look  some  of  the 
causes  of  this  misunderstanding  squarely  in  the  face,  not  in  a 
spirit  of  crimination  or  recrimination,  but  from  an  historical  and 
philosophic  rather  than  from  a  sectional  point  of  view. 

Honest  differences  of  opinion  between  individuals,  between 
sections,  between  nations,  are  inevitable.  These  differences  may 
be  settled  by  agreeing  to  differ,  by  an  appeal  to  the  courts,  by 
arbitration,  and  finally  by  an  appeal  to  the  sword.  President 
Lincoln,  in  his  famous  Thanksgiving  Proclamation  of  Novem- 
ber, 1863,  which  ranks  with  the  greatest  state  papers  among 
men,  spoke  of  the  War  between  the  Sections,  not  as  a  rebellion, 
but  as  "THE  LAMENTABLE  CIVIL  STRIFE  IN  WHICH 
WE  ARE  UNAVOIDABLY   ENGAGED." 

An  armed  conflict  between  the  reserved  rights  of  the  thir- 
teen independent  republics  acknowledged  by  Great  Britain  in 
1783,  and  the  rights,  powers  and  necessities  of  the  National  Gov- 
ernment which  these  independent  republics  formed  in  1789,  was 
inevitable  from  the  first.  This  conflict  culminated  in  i860.  The 
people  of  the  South,  deeming  their  constitutional  and  reserved 
rights  of  local  self-government  invaded,  appealed  to  the  sword 
and  lost.  Having  appealed  to  the  sword,  they  accepted  the  de- 
cision of  the  sword  in  good  faith,  and  no  part  of  the  Union  is 
more  loyal  to  the  flag  than  the  South,  or  more  ready  to  take  up 
arms  in  its  defence.  All  are  agreed  that  slavery  had  lasted  as 
long,  probably,  as  it  was  beneficial  to  the  black  man,  and  as  long 
as  the  white  man  could  stand  it  without  losing  strength;  that  the 
white  man  was  emancipated  rather  than  the  black  man;  and 
that  the  New  South  is  already  greater,  richer  and  more  powerful 
than  the  Old  South  could  ever  have  been,  and  our  wealth,  great- 
ness and  power,  which  are  no  longer  subject  to  "  inundation  or 
conflagration,"  are  as  yet  only  in  their  infancy. 

Whatever  the  right  of  secession  may  have  been  theoreti- 
cally, the  whole  South  sees  as  one  man  that  it  was  a  great  mis- 
take to  fight  for  a  national  unity  on  the  basis  of  disunity  at  will 
afterwards. 

The  dangerous  and  well  nigh  fatal  disease  with  which  a 
union  of  thirteen  independent  republics  was  born,  has  be^n 
cured  by  the  sharp  surgery  of  the  sword.  "  Immedicabile  vulnus 
ense  rescidendum,"  and  the  great  Republic  of  the  West,  like 
Hercules  of  old,  has  begun  the  labors  which  must  extend 
through  all  the  signs  of  the  Zodiac.  The  Nation,  composed  of 
States,  still  "  as  distinct  as  the  billows  "  and  yet  "as  one  as  the 


sea,"  from  the  "  E  PLURIBUS  unum  "  of  our  fathers,  has 
crystallized  into  a  UNUM  e  pluribus,  a  UNUM  of  strength,  of 
power  and  of  continuance.  It  has  aroused  itself,  like  a  giant 
from  his  wine,  has  recognized  its  opportunity  and  its  duty  as 
one  of  the  greatest  of  the  great  world  powers,  and  has  assumed 
its  place  as  a  world  power  with  a  grasp  so  mighty  as  to  pro- 
duce enthusiasm  at  home  and  fear  among  the  many  and  bitter 
enemies   of  Republics   abroad. 

But  if  the  secession  theory  had  prevailed,  the  Anglo-Saxon 
man  in  America  must  have  been  divided  into  as  many  petty  and 
warring  republics   as  there  were   local  and   conflicting  interests. 

While  the  United  States  were  only  the  dis-united  states  of 
Lord  Palmerston's  famous  toast  in  1861,  the  occupation  of 
American  territory  by  the  European  Powers  in  contempt  of  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  was  boldly  inaugurated  in  Mexico  by  Maxi- 
milian, supported  by  French  bayonets,  and  it  ended  summarily 
when  we  became  the  re-United  States.  If  the  secession  theory 
had  prevailed,  this  French  occupation  of  American  soil  would 
probably  have  been  only  the  beginning  of  European  "  spheres 
of  influence  "  in  North  America,  as  our  warring  republics  would 
have  sought  to  strengthen  themselves  by  European  alliances; 
the  latest  and  the  greatest  example  of  self-government  would 
have  been  pointed  at  by  autocratic  Europe  as  the  bloodiest  fail- 
ure among  men,  and  Anglo-Saxon  civilization  and  power  in  the 
Western  Continent  would  probably  have  gone  backward  at  least 
a  hundred  years,  or  perhaps  for  all  the  years,  instead  of  having 
been  pushed  forward  a  hundred  years  or  more  by  our  failure  to 
establish  a  Southern  Nationality. 

II. 

Such  at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century  is  the  practi- 
cally unanimous  opinion  of  the  people  of  the  South  about  slav- 
ery and  secession,  the  honest  differences  of  opinion  about  which 
in  i860  brought  on  the  Civil  War  and  its  sequences.  But  let  us 
look  calmly  and  dispassionately  at  the  conditions  which  pre- 
vailed at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  during  the  first 
half  of  the  nineteenth,  in  order  to  get  the  true  historical  and 
philosophic  perspective  as  to  the  differences  of  opinion  which 
crystallized  so  sharply  in   i860. 

When  the  Union  was  formed,  there  was  no  difference  of 
opinion  about  slavery.  Every  one  of  the  original  thirteen  States 
was  a  slave  State,  and  the  Constitution  put  a  premium  on  prop- 
erty in  slaves  by  allowing  a  slaveholder  five-fifths  of  a  vote  for 
himself  and  three-fifths  of  a  vote  for  each  of  his  adult  slaves, 
not  recognizing  the  seven  hundred  thousand  slaves  then  in  the 
Union,  according  to  the  census  of  1790,  as  men  at  all,  whose 
right  to  "  life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness  "  Anglo- 
Saxon  men  were  expected  to  respect.  Nor  were  the  remnant  of 
the  red  men,  numbering  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand,  per- 


haps,  regarded  as  men  with  any  rights  at  all  to  life,  liberty  or  the 
pursuit  of  happiness,  or  even  to  the  soil  which  had  belonged  to 
them  and  to  their  ancestors  for  unnumbered  generations.  Thus 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  of  three  million  Anglo-Saxon 
men  carried  beneath  it  the  unquestioned  right  to  enslave  seven 
hundred  thousand  black  men,  and  to  dispossess  and  slay  the 
remnant  of  the  red  man.  But  by  degrees  the  people  of  the 
North,  who  had  sailed  across  the  seas  and  enslaved  the  African 
man,  who  had  bred  him,  bought  him  and  sold  him,  found  slavery 
unsuitable  to  their  climate  and  conditions;  and  they  sold  their 
slaves  to  those  whose  climate  and  conditions  were  more  favor- 
able. Thus  slavery  gravitated  out  of  the  North  into  the  South, 
and  became  sectional,  and  about  that  time  the  invention  of  the 
cotton  gin  made  slavery  profitable;  so  that  the  cotton  gin  more 
than  anything  else  is  responsible  for  slavery  as  it  existed  in  i860. 

Before  1830  or  thereabouts,  there  seems  to  have  been  but 
little  awakening  of  conscience  among  the  late  slave  holders  of 
New  England  and  their  children,  prompting  them  to  restore  the 
African  man  to  his  old  home  from  which  their  fathers  had  forc- 
ibly deported  him,  or  to  give  him  his  freedom  and  the  right  of 
suffrage  in  his  new  home  among  themselves,  or  to  repurchase 
him  from  those  to  whom  they  had  sold  him  in  order  to  free  him 
at  their  own  expense  and  thus  to  atone  for  the  wrong  which 
they  and  their  fathers  had  done  him.  But  before  1800  there 
had  been  a  widespread  repugnance  in  the  South  to  the  slave- 
trade;  and,  while  New  England  was  actively  engaged  in  it,  the 
Legislature  of  Virginia  was  actively  protesting  against  it. 

In  1769,  the  Legislature  of  Virginia  prohibited  the  further 
importation  of  slaves;*  and,  in  the  Federal  Convention  of  1787, 
New  England  voted  with  South  Carolina  and  Georgia  for  the 
prolongation  of  the  slave-trade  for  twenty  years,  that  is,  to  1807, 
against  the  sturdy  opposition  of  Virginia.f 

In  his  "  Genius  of  Universal  Emancipation,"  Lundy  says 
that  there  were  in  1827  one  hundred  and  thirty  anti-slavery  so- 
cieties in  the  United  States,  with  six  thousand  six  hundred  and 
twenty-five  members.  Of  these,  one  hundred  and  six,  five-sixths 
of  the  whole,  with  fifty-one  hundred  and  fifty  members,  five- 
sixths  of  the  whole,  were  in  the  South.  According  to  Birney's 
"  Life  of  Birney,"  about  2,000  slaves  were  freed  in  North  Caro- 
lina in  1824,  1825  and  1826.  There  was  a  colony  of  some  three 
hundred  free  negroes  within  ten  miles  of  where  I  was  born. 
They  had  the  right  of  suffrage  till  1835,  and,  under  the  "  Grand- 
father Clause  "  of  our  suffrage  act  of  1900,  the  descendants  of  the 
free  negroes  who  voted  before  1835,  vote  by  inheritance,  now, 
just  as  the  descendants  of  white  voters  before  1865  vote  by  in- 
heritance, which  fact  makes  the  "  Grandfather  Clause  "  of  our 
suffrage  amendment  impregnable. 

*  John  Fiske,  Critical  Period  of  American  History  p.  72. 
t  Ibid  p.  72. 


But  the  most  notable  example  of  anti-slavery  feeling  in  the 
South  in  those  days  was  the  election  of  a  Legislature  in  Vir- 
ginia in  1831  or  1832  after  an  able  anti-slavery  campaign.  In 
this  Legislature,  the  members  "  tied  "  on  a  bill  for  the  gradual 
emancipation  of  all  the  slaves  in  Virginia,  and  the  chairman, 
though  he  favored  the  bill,  gave  the  casting  vote  against  it,  on 
the  ground  that  a  measure  of  such  importance  should  not  be 
undertaken  unless  a  clear  majority  favored  it.  But  about  this 
time  the  abolition  movement,  inaugurated  by  Wm.  Lloyd  Gar- 
rison in  Boston  (the  first  fruits  of  which  were  the  murder  of 
sixty-one  women  and  children  in  Southampton,  Virginia,  by  Nat 
Turner  and  his  associates),  entirely  changed  the  attitude  of  the 
South  towards  slavery,  and  of  the  one  hundred  and  six  anti- 
slavery  societies  which  existed  in  the  South  in  1827,  every  one 
had  disappeared  by  1839.  But  for  these  unhappy  events,  a  grad- 
ual emancipation  policj',  inaugurated  by  Southern  people  them- 
selves, would  probabl}'  have  solved  our  black  race  problem. 
It  thus  appears  that  the  people  of  the  South  were  protesting 
against  the  slave-trade,  while  the  people  of  New  England  were 
actively  engaged  in  it,  and  it  is  equally  true  that  Air.  Garrison  was, 
more  than  once,  in  imminent  danger  of  his  life  at  the  hands  of  a 
Boston  mob  for  his  abolition  sentiments  about  the  time  that 
Virginia  was  working  out  a  scheme  for  gradual  emancipation. 

It  would  help  the  progress  of  harmony  between  the  sec- 
tions if  the  people  of  the  North  would  study  the  Nation's  black 
race  problem  in  the  light  of  these  historic  verities  and  would 
bear  their  share  of  the  blame  for  conditions  the  origin  of  which 
their  fathers   and   grandfathers   had   more   hand   in   than   ours. 

III. 

Nor  was  there  any  difference  of  opinion  when  the  union 
was  formed,  about  the  abstract  right  of  secession. 

The  most  distinctive  characteristic  of  the  man  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  blood  is  his  intense  instinct  of  local  self-government. 
It  was  this  centrifugal  instinct  which  divided  the  England  of 
the  Angles  and  Saxons  into  a  heptarchy;  and  it  took  a  hundred 
years  of  Norman  domination  to  inject  enough  centripetency 
into  the  Anglo  Saxon  masses  to  give  stability  to  a  single  ad- 
ministration south  of  the  Tweed.  It  was  this  instinct  of  local 
autonomy  which  extorted  the  Magna  Charta  from  the  Planta- 
genets,  which  established  the  Church  of  England  instead  of  the 
Church  of  Rome  in  the  time  of  the  Tudors,  which  established 
the  principles  of  The  Bill  of  Rights  in  the  time  of  the  Stuarts, 
and  the  principles  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  in  the 
time  of  the  House  of  Brunswick.  Nowhere  among  men  had  the 
tide  of  local  autonomy  risen  so  high  as  among  the  English  col- 
onists after  the  War  of  the  Revolution.  It  took  more  than  six 
years  from  1783  to  1789  for  the  thirteen  independent  republics 

8 


acknowledged  by  Great  Britain  to  compromise  their  local 
rights  and  their  local  jealousies  sufficiently  to  form  a  federal 
union  on  any  conditions,  and  but  for  the  fear  of  attack  from 
without  it  is  doubtful  whether  these  thirteen  independent  re- 
publics would  have  united  at  all.  As  it  was  they  went  into  the 
Union  voluntarily,  as  an  experiment.  Virginia  claimed  the 
right,  ipsissimis  verbis,  to  come  out  at  will,  and  by  tacit  agree- 
ment the  abstract  right  of  secession  was  accorded  to  the  other 
States.  The  right  of  withdrawal  from  the  Union  had  been  form- 
ally claimed  seven  times  before  i860,  once  in  1832  by  South 
Carolina,  which  claim  was  promptly  suppress-ed  by  Andrew 
Jackson,  a  Southern  Democrat,  and  six  times  in  New  England. 
In  1803,  it  was  feared  by  New  England  that  the  Louisiana  pur- 
chase would  diminish  the  influence  of  their  section  of  the  Union; 
and  Senator  Pickering,  of  Massachusetts,  strongly  advocated  the 
formation  of  a  "  Northern  Confederacy."  In  1807,  Jefferson 
caused  the  repeal  of  the  Embargo  Act,  because  some  of  the  New 
England  States  said  that  they  would  withdraw  from  the  Union 
if  the  act  was  not  repealed.  In  1811,  Josiah  Quincy,  of  Massa- 
chusetts, protested  against  the  admission  of  Louisiana,  declaring 
that  "the  passage  of  the  bill  to  admit  Louisiana  would  be  a  dis- 
solution of  the  Union,"  and  that  "  it  would  be  the  right  of  all 
and  the  duty  of  some  to  prepare  for  a  separation,  peaceably,  if 
they  could,  forcibly,  if  they  must."  In  1814,  the  people  of  New 
England  met  in  convention  at  Hartford  and  withdrew  from  the 
Union,  on  account  of  their  dissatisfaction  with  the  management 
of  the  war  with  England  and  with  the  admission  of  Louisiana. 
But  the  war  with  Old  England  ended,  and  the  war  of  New  Eng- 
land against  the  other  States  was  not  begun.  In  1844,  the  Legis- 
lature of  Massachusetts  passed  an  ordinance  of  secession,  de- 
claring that  "  the  annexation  of  Texas  tended  to  drive  the  States 
into  a  dissolution  of  the  Union,"  and  that  "  Massachusetts  was 
determined  to  submit  her  undelegated  powers  to  no  body  of  men 
on  earth;"  and  again  in  1848  Massachusetts  talked  freely  and 
boldly  of  nullifying  the  Constitution  by  refusing  to  send  a  single 
soldier  to  uphold  the  flag  in  what  she  considered  an  unjust  war 
with  Mexico,  though  afterwards  she  did  send  one  regiment. 

To  these  repeated  acts  or  threats  of  disunion  by  the  people 
of  New  England  before  i860,  we  may  add  that  William  Lloyd 
Garrison's  "  Liberator,"  established  in  1831  as  the  organ  of  the 
unconditional  abolitionists,  constantly  took  the  ground  that  the 
Constitution  was  a  "  league  with  death  and  a  covenant  with 
hell,"  because  it  recognized  the  right  to  hold  slaves;  and  the 
abolition  of  slavery  was  urged,  although  Mr.  Garrison  held  that 
"  slavery  could  be  abolished  only  by  the  dissolution  of  the 
Union." 

Thus,  the  people  of  New  England  asserted  the  right  of 
secession  constantly  on  general  principles  and  in  six  special 
cases,  before   i860.     It  was  asserted  constantly  by  the  extreme 


abolitionists  from  1831  to  i860.  And,  while  the  Republican 
Party  suppressed  secession  in  the  United  States  of  North  Amer- 
ica by  armed  intervention  in  i86r,  the  same  Republican  Party 
supported  secession  in  the  United  States  of  South  America  by 
armed  intervention  in  1903. 


IV. 


Nor  is  it  surprising  that  a  belief  in  secession,  as  one  of  the 
reserved  rights  of  the  States,  should  have  prevailed  more  gener- 
ally in  the  North  than  in  the  South  before  i860,  when  we  con- 
sider that  the  right  of  secession  was  distinctly  taught  at  West 
Point  up  to  about  1840.  I  have  before  me  "  Rawle  on  the  Con- 
stitution," the  text-book  in  which  Robert  E.  Lee  and  Jefferson 
Davis  studied  the  Constitution  at  the  Government's  Military 
Academy.     In  this  book,  the  following  language  occurs: 

If  a  faction  should  attempt  to  subvert  the  government  of 
a  State  for  the  purpose  of  destroying  its  republican  form,  the 
national  power  of  the  Union  could  be  called  forth  to  subdue  it. 
Yet  it  is  not  to  be  understood  that  its  interposition  would  be 
justifiable  if  a  State  should  determine  to  retire  from  the  Union  " 
(p.  289).  "  It  depends  on  the  State  itself  whether  it  will  con- 
tinue a  member  of  the  Union.  To  deny  this  right  would  be  in- 
consistent with  the  principle  on  which  all  our  political  systems 
are  founded,  which  is,  that  the  people  have  in  all  cases  the  right 
to  determine  how  they  shall  be  governed."  p.  289).  "The 
States  may  then  wholly  withdraw  from  the  Union."  (p.  290). 
"  If  a  majority  of  the  people  of  a  State  deliberately  and  peace- 
ably resolve  to  relinquish  the  republican  form  of  government, 
they  cease  to  be  members  of  the  Union"  (p.  292).  "The  seces- 
sion of  a  State  from  the  Union  depends  on  the  will  of  the  people 
of  such  State  "  (p.  295).  "  In  any  manner  by  which  secession 
is  to  take  place,  nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  the  act  should 
be  deliberate,  clear  and  unequivocal"  (p.  296).  "The  people  of 
a  State  may  have  reason  to  complain  in  respect  to  acts  of  the 
general  government;  they  may,  in  such  cases,  invest  some  of 
their  own  officers  with  the  power  of  negotiation,  and  may  declare 
an  absolute  secession  in  case  of  failure.  The  secession  in  such 
cases  must  be  distinctly  and  peremptorily  declared  to  take  place, 
and  in  such  case,  as  the  case  of  unconditional  secession,  the  pre- 
vious ligament  with  the  Union  would  be  legitimately  and  fairly 
destroyed"  (p.  296).  "It  was  foreseen  that  there  would  be  a 
natural  tendency  to  increase  the  number  of  the  States.  It  was 
also  known  that  a  State  might  withdraw  itself"  (p.  297).  "To 
withdraw  from  the  Union  is  a  solemn,  serious  act."  "Whenever 
it  may  appear  expedient  to  the  people  of  a  State  to  withdraw 
from  the  Union,  it  must  be  manifested  in  a  direct  and  unequiv- 
ocal manner  "     (p.  298). 

And  the  instruction  given  at  West  Point,  from  1825,  to  1840, 
as  to  the  nature  of  a  personal  allegiance,  from  "  Rawle  on  the 
Constitution,"  is  specially  significant: 

"  This  right  (of  secession)  must  be  considered  an  ingredient 
in  the  original  composition  of  the  general  government,  and  the 
doctrine  heretofore  presented  in  regard  to  the  indefeasible  na- 

10 


ture  of  personal  allegiance  is  so  far  qualified  in  respect  to  alleg- 
iance to  the  United  States.  It  was  observed  that  the  reciprocal 
relations  of  protection  and  allegiance  might  cease  in  certain 
events,  and  it  was  further  observed  that  allegiance  would  neces- 
sarily cease  in  case  of  the  dissolution  of  the  society  (the  Union, 
in  that  case)  to  which  it  was  due"  p.  289-200). 

It  thus  appears  that  Robert  E.  Lee  was  taught  by  the  United 
States  Government  at  West  Point  that  the  Union  was  dissoluble, 
and  that,  if  it  should  be  dissolved,  allegiance  to  the  Union 
ceased,  reverting  to  the  States  by  which  the  Union  had  been 
created. 

And  when  at  the  beginning  of  a  great  war  Robert  E.  Lee 
subordinated  his  loyalty  to  the  flag,  under  which  he  had  served 
so  long  and  with  such  distinction,  to  his  sense  of  duty  and  to  his 
native  state;  when  he  stopped  his  ears  to  the  call  of  ambition 
from  the  strong  and  opened  them  to  the  cry  for  help  from  the 
weak;  when  he  refused  to  accept  the  command  of  the  Armies 
of  the  United  States  and  took  a  subordinate  position  offered 
him  by  Virginia,  he  set  an  example  of  self-sacrifice  and  devo- 
tion to  duty  for  duty's  sake  unequaled  in  the  history  of  soldiers 
and  of  armies. 

It  is  an  historic  fact  that  Jefferson  Davis  was  not  tried  for 
treason,  because,  under  several  States'  rights  decisions  of  Chief 
Justice  Chase,  before  he  became  Chief  Justice,  and  under  the 
States'  rights  instruction  received  at  West  Point  from  "  Rawle 
on  the  Constitution,"  which  was  to  be  put  in  evidence  if  the 
trial  had  occurred,  he  could  not  have  been  convicted. 

It  would  hasten  the  progress  of  harmony  between  the  sec- 
tions if  the  people  of  the  North  would  acquaint  themselves  with 
these  historic  verities;  if  they  would  cease  to  call  a  war  a  rebel- 
lion which  President  Lincoln  called  "  this  lamentable  civil  strife 
in  which  we  are  unavoidably  engaged;"  if  they  would  realize  that 
the  Confederates  were  neither  rebels  nor  traitors  and  that  there 
were  good  and  solid,  historical  and  constitutional  grounds  for 
our  acting  as  a  matter  of  duty  in  1861  on  the  belief  that  our  pa- 
triotism should  centre  around  the  STATES  rather  than  around 
the  UNION  of  States,  around  the  PLURES  which  had  created 
the  Union  rather  than  around  the  Union  which  the  Plures  had 
created  in  1789  and  had  dissolved  in  1861,  justly  and  legally  ac- 
cording to  the  conditions  of  the  original  compact. 

V. 

It  would  hasten  a  better  understanding  between  the  sections 
if  the  people  of  the  North  would  realize  that  the  black  race  prob- 
lem is  not  our  only  race  problem.  Let  us  look  calmly  at  the 
way  in  which  the  people  of  the  North  have  dealt  with  their  local 
race  problems.  They  have  practically  exterminated  the  red 
man;  and  the  remnant  of  the  Indians  who  have  not  been  slain 
like  the  buffaloes  have  been  set  off  in  reservations  like  the  rem- 


nant  of  the  buffaloes,  with  entire  disregard  of  their  local  and  ter- 
ritorial rights;  and  even  these  reservations  are  being  opened  to 
white   men. 

The  yellow  man,  though  inoffensive  and  industrious,  has 
been  slain  by  mobs  on  the  Pacific  Coast,  and  has  been  excluded 
from  the  soil  of  the  United  States  by  act  of  Congress  at  the  dic- 
tation of  white  labor-unions   of  Northern  people. 

The  territory  of  the  brown  man  in  the  Hawaiian  Islands  has 
been  annexed  in  the  financial  and  political  interests  of  white 
men,  and  an  educational  test  for  suffrage  has  been  introduced, 
disfranchising  many  of  the  brown  men  in  their  own  island,  and 
all  the  yellow  men  (Chinese  and  Japanese),  some  thirty  thous- 
and in  number,  and  about  five  thousand  white  Portuguese. 

Furthermore,  it  is  believed  that  thousands  of  the  brown 
men  in  the  Philippines  have  perished  under  methods  of  "  benevo- 
lent assimilation  "  practised  there.  With  such  sins  against  the 
red  man,  the  yellow  man  and  the  brown  man  to  be  answered 
for  wholly  or  chiefly  by  the  people  of  the  North,  does  it  not 
seem  strange  for  the  people  of  the  North  to  find  so  much  fault 
with  the  Southern  treatment  of  the  black  man,  when,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  he  has  not  only  been  conserved,  a  thing  which  never 
occurred  before  in  the  history  of  the  contact  of  our  race  with 
weaker  races,  but  when  under  our  tutelage  he  made  such  rapid 
progress  from  savagery,  and  in  some  cases  at  least  from  canni- 
balism, in  about  two  centuries  that  the  people  of  the  North 
deemed  him  worthy  to  share  with  themselves  in  the  citizenship 
of  the  Great  Republic? 

VI. 

An  historic  study  of  the  ballot  by  our  Northern  fellow  citi- 
zens would  tend  to  hasten  the  progress  of  a  better  understand- 
ing. 

By  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  and  of  every  State 
in  the  Union,  the  ballot  is  not  a  right,  but  a  privilege  to  be  ex- 
tended by  those  who  have  it  to  those  whom  they  deem  worthy 
of  it. 

The  people  of  the  North,  not  deeming  the  Indian  worthy  of  • 
the  ballot,  exclude  all  red  men  from  it.     Not  deeming  Chinese 
worthy  of  the  ballot,  they  exclude  all  yellow  men,  not  only  from 
the  ballot,  but  from  the  country. 

Not  deeming  the  brown  man  worthy  of  manhood  suffrage,  in 
1900  a  Republican  Congress  passed  a  bill,  which  was  signed  by  a 
Republican  President,  excluding  a  large  number  of  brown  men 
from  the  ballot  in  their  own  Island  of  Hawaii,  and  turning  the 
island  over  to  the  white  men.  Not  deeming  all  black  men  among 
themselves  worthy  of  manhood  suffrage,  they  excluded  illiterate 
black  men  from  the  ballot.  Not  deeming  all  white  men 
worthy  of  manhood  suffrage,  the  people  of  the  North  have  ex- 


eluded  illiterate  white  men  from  the  Dallot.  In  some  of  the 
Northern  States,  literacy  and  a  certain  amount  of  property  are 
made  the  condition  of  manhood  suffrage  and  under  this  limited 
suffrage  the  ballot  is  denied  to  about  one-third  of  the  white  men 
in  Rhode  Island.  We  of  the  South  think  that  this  limited  suf- 
frage, as  enforced  by  the  North,  is  just  and  right;  and  if  it  is  nec- 
essary in  the  North,  with  comparatively  so  few  illiterates,  it  is  a 
hundredfold  more  necessary  in  the  South.  And  yet  the  people  of 
the  North,  who,  in  extending  the  ballot  among  themselves,  have 
discriminated  so  sharply  against  all  red  men,  all  yellow  men,  all 
illiterate  black  men,  many  brown  men  in  their  own  island  and 
many  white  men,  discriminated  in  favor  of  all  black  men  in  the 
South,  though  racially  inferior  in  all  the  past  to  the  other  col- 
ored races  and  to  the  illiterate  white  men  who  remain  disfran- 
chised among  themselves. 

But  by  degrees  the  Anglo  Saxon  people  of  the  South,  who 
fought  not  for  slavery,  not  for  secession,  but  for  the  right  of 
local  self-government,  have  regained  by  legislation  what  they 
lost  against  overwhelming  odds  "  in  the  deadly,  imminent 
breach,"  and  have  confined  the  ballot  to  those  whom  they  deem 
worthy  of  it,  though  less  rigidly  than  it  is  confined  in  New  Eng- 
land. 

Becoming  convinced  that  the  legislation  of  the  reconstruc- 
tion period  was  hasty,  ill-advised  and  partisan,  Congress  has 
repealed  some  of  it;  the  Supreme  Court  has  annulled  some  of  it, 
as  being  unconstitutional;  and  the  consensus  of  opinion  at  the 
North  seems  to  be  to  relegate  the  whole  matter  of  suffrage  in 
the  Southern,  as  in  the  Northern,  States  to  the  intelligent  people 
of  each  State.  It  would  hasten  the  removal  of  the  misunder- 
standings between  the  sections,  if  the  suffrage  amendment 
should  share  the  fate  of  most  of  the  other  reconstruction  legisla- 
tion, and  be  removed  from  the  statute  books  in  form  as  it  has 
already  been  removed  in  fact,  with  only  an  occasional  threat  of 
cutting  down  the  representation  of  the  South  in  Congress  and 
the  Electoral  College,  a  threat  which  can  hardly  be  carried  out, 
as  the  discussion  of  it  would  bring  out  very  clearly  the  discrimin- 
ation of  the  Northern  people  against  the  colored  races  among 
themselves;  as  it  would  put  the  negro  question  again  into  poli- 
tics against  the  consensus  of  opinion  of  the  most  reasonable  men 
of  both  sections  and  against  the  best  interests  of  the  negro  him- 
self; and  as  an  act  which  would  operate  horizontally  —  and  no 
other  could  operate  at  all  —  would  cut  down  the  representation 
of  several  of  the  Northern  States  in  the  name  of  their  own  dis- 
franchised, both  colored  and  white,  both  literate  and  illiterate. 

VII. 

It  would  help  to  harmonize  the  sections,  if  the  Northern 
people  would  reflect  that  what  they  call  "  race  prejudice  "  is  not 

13 


peculiar  to  the  South.  We  discriminate  against  the  negro  politi- 
cally. We  must  preserve  our  political  integrity.  We  discrimi- 
nate against  him  socially.  We  must  preserve  our  own  race  in- 
tegrity. In  the  whole  North  about  one-sixtieth  of  the  population 
is  of  African  blood.  In  the  whole  South  nearly  one-half  of  the 
population  is  of  African  blood.  In  some  of  the  Southern  States, 
three-fifths  are  negroes,  and  in  localities  in  all  or  nearly  all  of  the 
Southern  States  nine-tenths  of  the  people  are  negroes.  A  weak 
solution  and  a  saturated  solution  of  a  drug  must  be  handled  dif- 
ferently. But  while  we  must  exercise  political  control  over  the 
African  man  and  must  reject  social  relations  with  him,  economi- 
cally the  negro  is  not  discriminated  against  anywhere  in  the 
South,  as  he  is  practically  everywhere  in  the  North.  If  a  con- 
tractor anywhere  in  the  North  had  twenty  white  carpenters  and 
twenty  white  bricklayers  employed,  and  were  to  add  five  negro 
carpenters  and  five  negro  bricklayers  to  his  force,  in  nine  cases 
out  of  ten,  probably  in  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  hundred,  his 
white  workmen  would  stop  working  at  once,  nor  would  they  al- 
low the  black  men  to  do  the  work.  Some  years  ago  I  employed 
a  contractor  to  do  some  building  for  me  and  he  put  about  twen- 
ty-five white  men  and  about  twenty-five  negroes  on  the  work. 
White  and  black  carpenters,  bricklayers,  painters  and  common 
laborers  worked  together  in  the  greatest  harmony  at  the  same 
wages  for  the  same  sort  of  work.  This  could  hardly  have  oc- 
curred in  New  England.  Negroes  got  higher  wages  than  white 
men  for  the  same  work  if  they  were  better  workmen.  This  could 
hardly  have  occurred  in  Illinois  or  Ohio.  And  white  men  and 
black  men,  with  wages  graded  by  skill  and  not  by  race,  worked 
in  perfect  harmony  under  my  contractor's  negro  foreman  or 
"  boss  carpenter."  This  could  not  have  occurred  in  any  North- 
ern State.  In  the  South,  white  men  and  negroes  may  not  eat  to- 
gether; but  not  eating  with  a  white  man  does  not  affect  a  black 
man's  supply  of  food  or  his  digestion.  In  the  North  white  men 
and  negroes  may  eat  together  in  many  public  places  at  least, 
and  some  negroes  may  eat  with  some  white  people  in  private. 
But  negroes  and  white  men  may  not  work  together  in  the  North; 
and  this  economic  discrimination  against  the  negro  strikes,  not 
at  his  political  relations,  not  at  his  social  relations,  but  at  his 
chance  to  get  food  and  clothing,  except  in  such  occupations  as 
white  men  do  not  want.  Our  discrimination  against  the  negro 
politically  and  socially  is  race  instinct,  which  is  minimized  in  the 
North  on  account  of  the  very  weak  "  solution,"  so  to  speak,  of 
negroes  in  the  North,  and  is  maximized  in  the  South  because  of 
our  "  saturated  solution  "  of  negroes.  But  the  economic  preju- 
dice against  the  negro  in  the  North  simply  because  he  is  black  is 
race  prejudice,  and  it  strikes  not  only  at  his  means  of  living,  but 
at  his  life  itself.  Of  the  negro  miners  who  went  from  Alabama 
to  Illinois  during  Governor  Tanner's  administration,  quite  a 
number  were  slain,  and  the  rest  were  driven  from  the  State;  and 

14 


the  Governor  of  President  Lincoln's  own  State,  and  a  member  of 
President  Lincoln's  own  political  party,  said  that,  if  any  more 
negro  laborers  started  to  Illinois,  he  would  meet  them  on  the 
border  with  Gatling  guns.  And  it  is  significant  that  not  one  of 
the  murderers  of  these  innnocent  and  industrious  laborers  has 
ever  been  brought  to  justice. 

VIII. 

Much  has  been  said  about  lynching  negroes  in  the  South, 
and  nothing  too  severe  can  be  said  about  this  crime  against  civil- 
ization. But  it  might  be  well  for  the  people  of  the  North  to  re- 
flect that  mobbing  negroes  began  in  New  York  about  1750,  when 
for  a  merely  supposed  plot  against  the  whites,  who  outnumbered 
the  blacks  five  to  one,  thirteen  negroes  were  burned  at  the  stake, 
eighteen  were  hanged  and  seventy-one  were  deported,  as  is  chron- 
icled in  Hildreth's  History  of  the  U.  S.,  Vol.  2,  Ch.  25,  and  in 
Lamb's  History  of  New  York  City,  Vol.  1,  Ch.  26.  Prof.  BuBois, 
of  Atlanta  University,  probably  the  most  learned  negro  in 
America,  in  "  The  Philadelphia  Negro,"  published  by  Ginn  &  Co., 
Ch.  4,  pages  25-39,  tells  how  in  Philadelphia,  between  1826  and 
1870  negroes  were  deprived  of  the  right  of  suffrage,  how  they 
were  murdered  by  mobs,  how  their  houses,  churches  and  even 
an  orphanage  were  burned  down,  and  how  their  women  and  chil- 
dren were  chased  out  of  the  city. 

With  these  historic  examples  of  race  prejudice  in  the  very 
centres  of  wealth,  population  and  intelligence  among  the  people 
of  the  North,  it  need  surprise  no  one  that  statistics  show  that 
more  negroes  have  been  put  to  death  by  mobs  in  the  North,  in 
proportion  to  the  negro  population,  than  in  the  South;  and  while 
the  crime  of  burning  the  houses,  churches  and  other  property  of 
negroes  is  of  not  infrequent  occurrence  in  the  Northeast  and 
Northwest,  this  form  of  race  prejudice  is  practically  unknown 
in  the  South.  When  we  anticipate  the  law  and  put  a  negro  to 
death  for  the  new  negro  crime  against  a  white  woman,  or  for 
murder  or  arson  (just  as  Northern  people  do,  only  not  so  often 
in  proportion  to  negro  population),  the  violence,  which  never 
should  have  occurred,  stops  with  the  criminal.  Innocent  negroes 
are  not  molested.  But  in  the  North  the  violence  only  begins 
with  the  mobbing  of  the  criminal,  and  it  continues  by  slaying 
innocent  and  inoffensive  negroes,  by  burning  their  houses,  de- 
stroying their  property,  and  by  driving  them  from  their  homes 
and  counties.  This  violence  of  race  prejudice,  which  was  first 
exhibited  in  New  York  City  about  1750,  as  has  been  already 
stated,  was  again  exhibited  in  the  anti-negro  riots  in  New  York 
city  recently,  in  the  anti-negro  riots  in  Wilmington,  Delaware, 
in  Akron  and  Urbana,  Ohio,  President  McKinley's  own  State; 
in  Danville  and  Springfield,  Illinois,  President  Lincoln's  own 
State;    in    Evansville   and    Rockport,    Indiana,    President    Harri- 

15 


sou's  own  State  (where  in  twenty-seven  (27)  counties  a  negro 
is  not  allowed  to  live  at  all),  in  many  other  Northern  States,  and 
in  the  harrowing  and  murder  of  the  Chinese  on  the  Pacific  Coast 
and  in  excluding  them  from  the  country,  although  they  wer-e 
accused  of  no  crime  at  all  except  the  crime  of  working  better 
and  more  cheaply  than  their  white  competitors.  If  the  better 
element  in  these  communities  were  as  anxious  to  suppress  lynch- 
ing and  punish  lynchers  at  home  as  they  are  to  suppress  lynch- 
ing and  punish  lynchers  in  the  South,  some  of  their  own  law- 
breakers would  have  been  brought  to  justice  in  the  Northeast, 
in  the  Northwest  and  on  the  Pacific  Coast.  But  grand  juries  in 
the  North,  with  public  sentiment  ostensibly  entirely  in  their 
favor,  very  rarely,  if  ever,  find  true  bills  against  such  murderers. 

An  objector  may  say  that  this  is  only  an  "  et  tu  quoque." 
But  where  one  side  cries  "  Tu,"  it  is  not  unreasonable  for  the 
other,  when  backed  by  such  historical  and  statistical  facts,  to 
say,  "  Et  tu  quoque,"  and  perhaps  to  add  the  proverb,  "  Physi- 
cian, heal  thyself "  of  race  prejudice  in  treating  a  weak  and 
harmless  "  solution  "  of  the  African  man  before  finding  too  much 
fault  with  our  race  instinct  in  treating  our  "  saturated "  and 
therefore  more  or  less  dangerous  "  solution." 

All  the  best  people  of  the  South  are  entirely  opposed  to 
lynching.  In  practice  it  has  failed  as  a  remedy  for  crime,  and  it 
has  not  only  brutalized  those  engaged  in  it,  but  it  has  most  seri- 
ously discounted  the  majesty  of  the  law.  It  ought  to  be  stopped. 
It  must  be  stopped.  But  it  will  not  stop  till  both  races,  North 
and  South,  unite  in  stopping  negroes  from  assaulting  white  wo- 
men and  girl  children,  from  murdering  white  people  and  from 
burning  their  houses,  crimes  which  were  unheard  of  in  the  South 
before  1865,  and  which  are  confined  almost  exclusively  to  the 
negroes  who  were  born  after  1865,  when  the  negroes  became  the 
wards   of   the    Nation. 

IX. 

It  would  help  to  harmonize  the  sections  if  the  people  of  the 
North  would  realize  how  much  we  did  for  the  industrial  educa- 
tion of  the  negro  before  1865  and  how  much  we  have  done  for 
his  education  in  books  since  1865.  In  1867  the  people  of  the 
North  conferred  unrestricted  manhood  suffrage  on  all  the  black 
men  in  the  Southern  States.  The  blacks  in  the  South  composed 
nearly  half  of  our  population,  and  the  injection  of  such  a  mass  of 
illiterates  into  our  citizenship  was  a  great  menace  to  the  civili- 
zation, not  only  of  the  South,  but  of  the  whole  country.  But  the 
red  men,  the  yellow  men,  the  illiterate  black  men  and  the  illiter- 
ate white  men  in  the  Northern  States,  composing  their  disfran- 
chised, aggregated  all  combined,  so  unappreciable  a  proportion 
of  their  population  as  to  be  not  the  slightest' menace  to  them; 
and  yet  they  were  disfranchised  and  the  negro  in  the  South  was 

16 


enfranchised.  Having  made  the  great  mistake  against  this  child 
race  of  conferring  the  ballot  on  the  negro  with  absolutely  no 
training  in  self-government,  they  made  no  appropriation  of  funds 
to  be  used  in  preparing  him  for  the  intelligent  use  of  the  ballot. 
His  training  in  citizenship  was  left  to  benevolent  enthusiasts  in 
the  North  and  to  the  impoverished  white  people  in  the  South. 
The  benevolent  enthusiasts  seemed  to  act  on  the  belief  that  the 
African  man  is  an  Anglo-Saxon  in  a  black  skin,  and  that  mere 
book  learning  would  soon  relieve  him  of  his  African  disabilities. 
And  so,  in  direct  opposition  to  the  methods  of  Gen.  Armstrong 
at  Hampton  and  of  Booker  Washington  at  Tuskegee,  they  put 
as  much  as  twenty-five  million  dollars  into  showy  piles  of  brick 
and  stone  and  mortar,  in  various  parts  of  the  South,  in  "  col- 
leges "  and  "  universities,"  where  this  infant  of  civilization  might 
receive  higher  learning  in  the  humanities,  the  sciences  and  theol- 
ogy, no  provision  being  made  for  giving  him  the  elementary 
training  on  which  all  higher  education  must  be  built. 

We  of  the  South  feel  that  the  motives  of  the  philanthropists 
were  good,  but  that  their  methods  were  defective  in  the  quality 
of  the  education  offered;  and  that  they  were  unfortunate  in  their 
discrimination  against  the  whites  of  the  South,  the  two  hundred 
and  twenty-five  thousand  dollar  investment  made  by  the  North- 
ern Presbyterian  Church  on  the  Asheville  Plateau  for  the  up- 
lifting of  our  poor  white  boys  and  girls,  being  the  only  consider- 
able and  well  organized  investment  of  the  kind  in  the  Southern 
States.  The  race  feeling  of  the  non-slaveholder  and  his  children 
against  the  negro  which  in  the  nature  of  things  has  never  been 
good,  is  held  in  abeyance  as  yet  by  the  attitude  of  the 
slave-holding  class,  who  have  always  controlled  Southern  senti- 
ment. But  the  feeling  is  deep  and  strong,  though  latent  and 
mostly  quiescent  as  yet;  and  this  discrimination,  educationally, 
against  the  whites  and  in  favor  of  the  negro,  has  tended  to  make 
the  race  feeling  of  our  non-slave-holding  class  less  latent  and  less 
quiescent;  and  unless  the  best,  the  most  thoughtful  and  most 
intelligent  people  of  both  sections  unite  against  this  rising  tide 
of  race  feeling  in  the  non-slave-holding  whites*  against  the  blacks, 
the  attitude  of  the  white  laborers  in  the  South  will  soon  be  what 
it  has  already  become  in  the  North  towards  the  negro. 

The  small  proportion  of  negro  laborers  in  the  North  makes 
the  feeling  of  the  white  laborers  against  them  of  minor  impor- 
tance. But  anything  which  stimulates  race  feeling  in  the  South 
with  our  large  proportion  of  negroes  should  be  avoided  by  both 
races  in  both  sections. 

As  Northern  philanthropists  provided  only  for  the  higher  ed- 
ucation of  the  negro,  and  as  the  Government  made  no  provision 
whatever  for  him  educationally,  the  Southern  people  in  their 
poverty  undertook  the  work  as  best  they  could.  I  believe  it  is 
safe  to  say  that,  at  the  close  of  the  Civil  War,  we  were  the  poor- 
est people  in  the  civilized  world.     We  staked  everything  on  the 


decision  of  the  sword  and  lost,  and  we  had  nothing  on  which  to 
re-build  our  shattered  fortunes  but  the  ground  we  stood  on. 
Nevertheless,  we  assumed  the  imperative  duty  of  educating  the 
negro,  taxing  ourselves  to  the  constitutional  limit  for  public 
schools,  and  dividing  the  proceeds  of  tax  money  pro  rata  among 
our  own  children  and  the  children  of  the  blacks,  who  have  never 
up  to  this  day  paid  more  than  five  per  cent,  of  the  taxes,  and  who 
used  the  ballot  against  us  with  a  steady  and  persistent  hostility, 
which  would  not  have  been  tolerated  by  employers  in  employees 
for  a  single  year  anywhere  else  in  the  world,  and  least  of  all  in 
New  England.  When  we  reached  the  constitutional  limit  of  tax- 
ation for  public  schools  for  whites  and  blacks  alike,  we  intro- 
duced "  local  option  "  taxation  in  almost  every  county  in  the 
South,  and  divided  the  increased  proceeds  of  taxation  pro  rata  be- 
tween the  children  of  both  races.  Bills  were  introduced  into  the 
Legislatures  of  several  States,  now  controlled  by  white  people, 
to  appropriate  to  the  schools  for  the  negroes  only  what  the  taxes 
on  their  property  produced;  but  in  every  case  these  bills  were 
voted  down  by  overwhelming  majorities  of  white  men.  In  this 
spirit,  the  South,  in  its  impoverished  condition,  has  paid  One 
Hundred  and  Twenty  Million  Dollars  of  tax  money  for  the  edu- 
cation of  negro  children,  though  our  own  children  were  crying 
to  us  for  educational  bread,  and  we  could  give  them  little  better 
than  a  stone.  In  addition  to  this,  we  established  normal  schools 
for  their  teachers,  schools  for  their  blind,  schools  for  their  mutes 
and  asylums  for  their  insane,  all  from  the  proceeds  of  taxes  paid 
to  the  extent  of  from  ninety-five  per  cent,  to  ninety-eight  per 
cent,  by  white  people;  and,  in  addition,  we  have  established  sev- 
eral theological  schools  for  the  education  of  their  preachers  by 
private  benevolence.  In  short,  we  have  adopted  these  neglected 
wards  of  the  Nation,  and  have  made  them  the  foster-brothers  and 
sisters  educationally  of  our  own  children.  And  yet,  many  North- 
ern papers  and  many  Northern  people  can  see  nothing  but  op- 
pression and  cruelty  in  our  dealings  with  the  black  man  since  we 
delivered  him  over  to  the  Nation  in  1865,  orderly,  fairly  indus- 
trious, practically  without  vices,  disease  or  crime,  and  worthy, 
in  the  estimation  of  the  people  of  the  North  to  share  with  them 
in  the  citizenship  of  the  Republic.  But,  in  spite  of  our  vast  out- 
lay on  him,  in  proportion  to  our  resources,  in  the  hands  of  the 
Nation  he  has  become  disorderly,  idle,  vicious  and  diseased;  and, 
according  to  the  Census,  three  times  more  criminal,  hundred  per 
hundred,  than  the  native  whites,  one  and  one-half  times  more 
criminal  than  the  foreign  whites,  three  times  more  criminal  in 
the  Northeast,  where  he  has  not  been  a  slave  for  a  hundred 
years,  and  three  and  a  half  times  more  criminal  in  the  Northwest 
where  he  was  never  a  slave,  than  in  the  South.  The  most  dis- 
couraging features  of  these  revelations  of  the  Census  are:  (1) 
that  his  maximum  criminality  and  his  minimum  illiteracy  concur 
in  New   England;   and   (2),  according  to  the   Census,  that  more 

18 


than  seven-tenths  of  the  negro  criminals  are  under  thirty  years 
of  age.  This  result  of  the  Nation's  dealing  with  the  negro  since 
1865,  as  compared  with  our  dealing  with  him  before  1865,  and  in 
spite  of  our  having  divided  our  educational  bread  between  his 
children  and  ours  ever  since  the  surrender,  must  convince  rea- 
sonable people  at  the  North  that,  in  dealing  with  the  negro,  the 
Nation  has  made  a  mistake  in  some  way;  and  that  this  mistake 
must  be  corrected  somehow. 

X. 

And,  lastly,it  would  help  harmonize  the  sections  if  all  Amer- 
icans would  keep  in  mind  that  the  war  and  its  unhappy  sequences 
belong  to  the  history  of  sectional  America,  and  that  the  peace, 
power  and  glory  of  our  future  can  be  attained,  and  can  be  main- 
tained, only  by  National  America.  Every  man  in  both  armies 
knows  that  the  Americans  who  met  on  the  field  were  to  each 
other  "the  enemy"  only  in  the  technical,  military  sense,  but  they 
were  never  enemies.  The  thousands  and  thousands  of  kind- 
nesses between  Confederate  and  Federal,  even  on  the  firing-line 
when  the  firing  was  suspended,  on  the  picket-line  and  among  the 
dead  and  dying,  show  that  the  men  on  both  sides  who  were  at 
the  front  were  there  from  a  sense  of  duty  and  not  because  they 
loved  war,  or  because  they  did  not  love  each  other.  And  when 
Lee's  thin,  ragged  skirmish-line  stacked  their  arms  for  the  last 
time  at  Appomattox  Court-House,  the  solemnity  of  a  funeral 
prevailed,  and  I  saw  tears  of  sympathy  and  pity  streaming  from 
the  eyes  of  the  Federal  soldiers  who  stood  in  line  on  each  side  of 
us.  They  had  pursued  us  and  overwhelmed  us,  but  they  were 
touched  with  the  feeling  of  our  infirmity,  and  the  victorious 
Americans  mingled  their  tears  with  the  tears  of  the  vanquished 
Americans.     This  was  the  spirit  of  National  America. 

When  President  Johnson  and  Secretary  Stanton,  in  order  to 
"punish  traitors  and  make  treason  odious,"  issued  the  order  to 
General  Grant  to  arrest  all  the  Confederate  officers  through  the 
rank  of  Colonel,  that  they  might  be  convicted  by  a  drumhead 
court  martial  and  put  to  death,  General  Grant  looked  into  their 
faces  and  said:  "You  will  have  to  whip  me  and  my  army  before 
one  hair  of  one  head  of  the  men  whom  we  captured,  and  whom 
I  promised  protection  to,  shall  perish."  And  the  spirit  of  sec- 
tional America  quailed  before  the  spirit  of  National  America. 
But  in  an  evil  day  the  politicians  who  had  kept  resolutely  away 
from  the  firing  line,  and  who  had  been  peaceful  in  war,  became 
warlike  in  peace;  and  the  reconstruction  period  followed,  that 
period  of  compression,  of  depression,  of  repression,  of  suppres- 
sion and  of  oppression,  when  for  the  first  time  since  time  began 
a  white  race  undertook  to  put  the  feet  of  a  colored  race  on  the 
necks  of  men  and  women  of  their  own  blood  and  breed. 

It  has  taken  the  people  of  the  North  nearly  forty  years  to 


get  something  like  the  true  perspective  on  this  period  which  was 
dominated  by  the  most  evil  spirit  of  sectional  America.  But 
leading  men  of  the  North  have  now  begun  to  discuss  it  clearly 
and  strongly,  and  to  recognize  the  mistakes  made  against  us 
and  against  the  black  man. 

While  waiting  patiently  and  hopefully  for  the  spirit  of  Na- 
tional America,  the  people  of  the  South  did  not  wait  idly.  We  re- 
built our  shattered  fortunes  as  only  men  of  Anglo-Saxon  blood 
can  rebuild,  and  we  restored  our  political  supremacy. 

We  shall  do  all  that  we  can  to  continue  the  education  of  the 
African  man  along  the  line  of  his  capabilities.  We  shall  restrain 
his  suffrage,  but  only  as  New  England  restrains  the  suffrage  of 
white  men.  After  1908,  the  same  qualifications  for  suffrage 
shall  be  applied  to  his  children  and  to  ours;  and  these  qualifica- 
tions are  less  rigid  than  those  applied  to  white  men  in  the  North- 
ern States;  but,  having  been  dominated  by  him  from  1867  to  1876, 
we  shall  not  allow  his  political  liberty  to  degenerate  again  into 
political   license. 

The  evil  spirit  of  sectional  America  is  being  exorcised  as  the 
years  of  the  new  century  come  and  go.  And  our  Race  Questions, 
and  all  other  questions  which  may  arise,  may  be  safely  com- 
mitted, by  a  combined  New  North,  New  South,  New  East,  New 
West,  to  the  NEW  NATIONAL  AMERICA,  which  has  become 
so  great  and  so  strong  in  the  present,  and  which  will  become  still 
greater  and  still  stronger  in  the  degree  in  which  we  all  become 
more  and  more  unitedly  animated  by  the  spirit  of  National 
Americans. 


HACKNEY  &   MOALE  CO.,    ASHEVILLE, 


Photomount 

Pamphlet 

Binder 

Gaylord  Bros. 

Makers 
Syracuse,  N.  Y. 

PAT.  M  21,  1908 


UNIVERSITY  OF  N.C.  AT  CHAPEL  HILL 


00032721715 

FOR  USE  ONLY  IN 
THE  NORTH  CAROLINA  COLLECTION 


.■.■S''^'1^-^.'";^''' 


